by Rob May
Will was transfixed by the flames. ‘Um, yeah …’ he agreed, snapping out of it, and they both turned to run. But the exits were jammed with a mass of panicking people, while armed soldiers kept watch for the escaping prisoners.
Kal scanned the crowds. Nim had appeared out of the door to one of the four watchtowers that rose from the perimeter of the amphitheatre. What had she been doing up there? Kal ran along the wooden benches to get to her, and Will followed. The dragon, meanwhile, had landed on the opposite side of the terraces, and was chewing on one of Cassava’s soldiers who had dared to approach it.
‘Kal!’ Nim exclaimed when they met. They all had to move clear of the fire that had spread to the litter and debris beneath the stands, and was chasing people out of their seats with hungry licking flames. ‘Hello again, Will! This is crazy! Who brought that poor dragon into the city?’
‘Nim! What are you doing here?’
‘Oh, I’ve been going back and forth between the university and Ben’s house all morning, delivering those explosives you wanted. You know, for that underground adventure you were talking about. Ha ha, I had to steal the ingredients bit-by-bit from the chemistry lab—’
‘Nim!’
‘Oh, sorry, Kal—Ben’s having an election drinks gathering at the mansion for all his senator friends. I overheard someone saying that you and Will had been caught! Ben sent me over to try and help you out.’
Kal swore. Ben was fooling around with other senators—potential murder victims—when he should have been keeping a low profile all day! ‘I have to get back there!’ she said.
‘You mentioned you’d come to help Kal,’ Will reminded Nim urgently.
‘Oh yeah! Well, if you can’t find a way out at ground level, I’ve left a little something for you at the top of that tower!’
Kal didn’t have time to ask what. A gang of soldiers had spotted them and were fighting through the crowds to get closer. Kal ran for the tower with Will hot on her heels. ‘Thanks, Nim!’ she called back as she went.
A wooden stair spiralled up the tower. Kal kicked open the door at the top and found herself outside on a five-yard-square platform, two hundred feet up, the sole purpose of which seemed to be to support a guard and a flagpole. The guard lay unconscious before her, a small dart sticking out of the side of his neck. Well done, Nim! Next to him was what looked like a parcel wrapped in canvas with rope handles. Kal saw a note attached that read: JUMP!!
She stood there, contemplating the package. Smoke and screams drifted up from the pandemonium below. The whole amphitheatre shuddered as the dragon rampaged through the terraces. Will appeared at the top of the tower and started looking around the parapet.
‘No escape wire?’ he asked.
‘Not this time,’ Kal said, showing him the package.
Will looked doubtful. ‘We can’t trust our combined weight again this high up,’ he said. ‘I’ll find another way out.’ He looked at the short sword he had managed to hold on to. ‘Don’t worry—I’ll try not to hurt anyone too bad.’
Kal nodded. Killing outlawed cultists like the Dragonites was one thing, but killing citizens, let alone soldiers of the legions, was wrong, no matter how crazy their general was.
Will kissed her goodbye and turned back to the tower. Kal could hear the footsteps of the soldiers as they ascended. Across the amphitheatre, as flames raced up one of the opposite towers, a soldier jumped to his death. Elsewhere, there was a crash and a chorus of screams as one of the seating stands collapsed. Kal hoped Nim had gotten out already. She trusted Will would find a way.
She took a deep breath and wrapped her wrists in the rope handles of the canvas pack. She had to get to Ben and the other senators before the killer did. Without Cassava’s help, she would have to stand between them and the killer alone.
Over all the noise and voices, Kal could hear Cassava’s voice ringing out, shouting for Kal over and over. Kal shook her head. Sorry, General. Got to go. She stepped back to the corner of the platform, muttered one final expletive, then took a running leap into the unknown.
* * *
The dragon left the amphitheatre at the same time Kal did, except that as it was soaring upwards towards stormy skies, Kal was plunging to the city streets. But then the parachute snapped open, and Kal found herself gliding west above the rooftops, wafted away from the burning amphitheatre on a lucky updraft of hot air from the fire. She looked up: the chute had opened in a pyramidal shape, two yards square, held together by a frame of bamboo rods.
The dragon flapped off to the north, in the direction of the distant Starfinger Mountains. ‘Fine!’ Kal yelled after it. ‘Leave me to sort out this city’s problems on my own, why don’t you!’
She laughed as she flew: laughed at her own joke; laughed at the sheer exhilaration and relief of her escape; laughed at the sudden surge of power and confidence she felt as she traversed the city like a super-powered god. She also laughed as she wondered if Nim had personally tested her latest creation before entrusting it to Kal. As if!
Kal found she could steer a course by yanking on the handles of the chute. She passed by the Snake Pit, and shouted down when she spotted Zeb and Gwyn outside. They didn’t look up, and Kal passed on by, crossing the Embankment, the Cold Flow, and finally touching down on the university lawns at the foot of Arcus Hill.
A gathering of astonished students watched as she cut herself free of the chute with her dagger. ‘Don’t try that without at least three large drinks beforehand,’ she advised them as she hurried past and up the Hill.
Kal made it to Ben’s mansion five minutes later, a mere fifteen minutes since she had turned the tables on Cassava and freed the dragon. She could see that the lights were on inside, despite it still being early afternoon. As she ran breathlessly up the gravel drive, she could also make out the silhouettes of Ben’s guests behind the ground floor windows. There was no sign of the Senate Guard who were supposed to be on duty outside. Kal picked up her pace—
—and was stopped suddenly in her tracks as a blinding yellow light flashed from behind every window. For a split second the silhouettes inside were picked out in sharp contrast, before fragmenting into thousands of pieces as all the glass windows shattered.
Then the mansion exploded with an deafening BOOOOM, and Kal barely had time to drop to the ground before chunks of stone and marble began to rain down on top of her.
V.iv
Tumbling Dice
Ben! Kal’s shock lasted mere moments, before avenging fury took its place. She brought all of her anger to the aid of her muscles, and heaved away the splintered wooden beam that had her pinned to the ground. Masonry and smashed furniture fell away as Kal stood up in a cloud of dust.
She had been transported to another world; instead of the sunlit tranquillity of the previous day, the peak of Arcus Hill was now a vision of hell. Roiling black clouds hung so low they were almost within reach. Rising plumes of dust and smoke obscured the horizon, and scattered flames played freely among the grey rubble that lay everywhere. There was nothing human, nothing recognisably man-made, within sight.
Kal cringed as a zigzagging bolt of lightning flashed through the sky, revealing the nearby bulk of the Basilica as it grounded itself on the spire of the dome. Kal knew that the thunder would follow, but even so it still made her quail as it echoed all around. She felt it rattle her bones.
What had happened here to turn her world upside down? An accident? Nim had mentioned that she had been storing explosives at the mansion. But Nim was far too professional to be careless. Someone else must have seen an opportunity to wreak havoc. Kal had foreseen death today, but not on this scale.
She started to pick her way through the remains of the mansion. Kal had wanted the explosives for an expedition she planned to lead into the caves below the city. Well, that looked like it was going to be a one-woman expedition now. But at least she no longer needed the explosives: she had picked up something in town today that she hoped would allow her to access the my
sterious door deep underground that bore the mark of Feron Firehand.
She wandered at random in this disorienting new world, but then she picked out the cracked dome of the garden rotunda, and she made her way over to it. Ben’s statues of Banos and Arcus had been smashed to bits; an alabaster hand jutted out of the broken masonry as if in greeting (or perhaps farewell) and Kal saw a white head—she wasn’t sure which god it belonged to—face down on the scorched grass.
The plinth still covered the stairs that led underground. Kal grabbed a broken length of iron railing and jammed it in the crack that ran down the middle. With all of her strength, she levered the plinth apart. It was dark down the hole, and a blessed cool breeze escaped and washed over Kal’s grimy, sweat-soaked face. She paused for a moment to regain her breath, then turned to her next task: ripping off the sleeves of her black silk shirt, and winding the material around a fallen branch to make a torch.
Three hundred steps led down to the stalagmite-strewn Forgotten Tomb. It was the first time that Kal had been here without Ben. They had discovered it together, and every time since he had been waiting for her, feet up on the sarcophagus, usually with some crazy mission to send her on. Kal lit the braziers that surrounded the stone coffin. She trailed her fingers along its rough edge. Ben always wanted to be buried here, with his divine ancestors. But would she ever find his remains now?
Kal put all gloomy thoughts aside for later. She had to hurry; now that she thought she had deduced the killer’s identity, it was only a matter of proving it, and then all she would have to do was hand the matter over to … well, there had to be someone she could trust in this city. Kal turned to the far side of the cavern, where a stout wooden door marked the tunnel by which she and Ben had entered the tomb all those years ago; the tunnel that led to the endless maze of secret passages and troll caves … and ultimately to a stone door that bore the flaming fist sigil of Feron Firehand.
She lifted the heavy wooden bar that secured the door from the inside, then heaved it open.
And as soon as she did so, she stumbled backwards in shock.
The armoured ghost of Feron Firehand was waiting for her in the darkness on the other side.
Kal backed away until she felt her behind touch the stone of the tomb. The ghost advanced a few steps into the cave and then stopped. It held a two-handed broadsword point-down in front of it. Standing perfectly still, the ghost resembled the effigy on a tomb of a knight.
Then it spoke.
Leave, it said, the words sounding as hollow as knocking bones.
Kal opened her mouth to reply, but her tongue was thick and dry in her mouth. She swallowed painfully. Why am I afraid?
Leave, the ghost repeated. Now.
Kal found her voice. ‘I know you won’t kill me,’ she told it. ‘I’m not on your list.’
The ghost said nothing; it just stood there blocking the way. Kal made a move to step past it, but the ghost raised its blade threateningly. She paused—could she be sure the ghost wouldn’t hurt her? Kal thought she knew who was behind the helmet … but how well did she really know that person?
This stalemate continued for another long minute, and then was broken by the sound of several pairs of boots on the stairs down from the ruin of the mansion. General Cassava appeared, followed by three of her soldiers.
Kal’s eyes flicked between the ghost and the general. ‘So you finally decided to come and help me after all?’ she said to Cassava.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Cassava growled. ‘Help you? After the stunt you pulled at my games? No, Moonheart, I’m here to finish what we started. And if I can’t beat you at dragon killing, then I’ll beat you at ghost hunting!’
And with that, Cassava raised her axe and charged across the cavern. She dodged the stalagmites, jumped up onto the tomb, ran its length, then leaped at the armoured figure of the ghost, swinging her axe in an overhead arc directed at her target’s helmet.
The ghost was fast: fast enough to raise its sword in time, and quick-witted enough to realise that clashing blades with Cassava’s falling axe wouldn’t be wise. Instead, it aimed its counter-strike at the axe handle, and knocked the weapon out of Cassava’s grasp. The general hit the cavern floor weaponless, and rolled away, calling for her troops to step in to attack.
Kal had been skirting the fight, and found herself within grasping distance of the general’s axe. She lifted it up, but it was too heavy for her to consider using herself. Instead, she looked over at Cassava, who was staring back at Kal, while between them the ghost battled with all three of the soldiers at the same time. One of them was already on his knees, blood spurting from a mortal wound.
What the hell, Cassava could take all the glory if that was what she wanted. Kal swung the axe and lobbed it with an underhand throw. It sailed over the heads of the combatants and fell directly into Cassava’s hands. ‘Take the killer alive!’ Kal shouted. As Cassava waded back into the fight, Kal nipped behind the ghost and plunged into the tunnels beyond.
* * *
She ran blindly for a while, just to get clear of the sounds of combat. Kal’s torch barely lit the way, and it was almost impossible to tell which tunnels were man-made, which were carved by monsters, and which were natural caves. She tried to take the downwards sloping passages, if possible, and head east, although her sense of direction was the first thing that deserted her.
Kal paused to catch her breath. In the distance she could hear noise and running footsteps … getting closer! She feared the ghost was coming for her, desperate to stop her entering its secret lair. Kal took a deep breath and hurried on.
The noise of pursuit sounded suddenly closer than ever, and at that exact moment Kal found herself coming up against a dead end. Panic began to rise deep within her. She turned back, but as she approached the previous junction she saw one of Cassava’s guards run past it. Was he chasing … or being chased? Kal lingered at the corner for a while, but now there was not a single sound to be heard.
She went on, cautiously. The explanation for the silence became clear a hundred yards further down the tunnel. The soldier she had just seen was lying on his back, his throat slashed out. A couple of steps further on, Kal found the head of the final soldier. There was no sign of a matching body. Kal squinted into the darkness ahead of her. Would she find Cassava’s corpse next? Would she herself live long enough to find it?
An ear-splitting scream broke the silence. That didn’t sound like a scream of pain … it sounded like a battle cry! Cassava! It came from the direction Kal wanted to go—they must have gotten ahead of her when she took the wrong turn. She extinguished her torch when she saw light up ahead. Perhaps she could slip around them again.
In an open cave, surrounded by a ring of dropped torches, General Cassava battled the ghost of Feron Firehand. Despite the armour, the ghost was the fastest of the combatants, dodging and twisting away from the general’s ponderous axe swings. But the general wasn’t a clumsy fighter by any means: she wielded her axe with a varied, imaginative style: as well as slicing, she was stabbing with the sharp corner of the blade, then sliding the axe head down to her hand, and hitting out with unpredictable thrusts from the shaft.
As Kal crept up on them, the fight suddenly ended. Cassava blocked a sword strike with the shaft of her axe, then, while still holding her weapon out horizontally in front of her, shoved forward and impaled the ghost’s right shoulder with the sharp heel at the bottom of the axe blade. The ghost dropped its sword, and Cassava stood back to prepare a finishing blow.
But the ghost’s sword hit the cavern floor point first, and in the instant before it toppled over, the ghost took it up again in its left hand, and ran it straight through Cassava’s stomach.
The general collapsed to her knees without a sound, and the ghost turned and fled. Kal ran to the fallen general’s side, only to find her grinning and laughing as she coughed up blood.
‘Well, get after it, Moonheart!’ Cassava spluttered. ‘I winged the bastard. Now you go and
finish the job!’
‘How can I stop it if even you couldn’t?’ Kal said, as she checked Cassava’s wound. Blood was leaving her body so fast that a small red lake was forming on the cavern floor.
‘Well if you don’t, then we’ll call it a draw!’ Cassava took a ragged breath and looked Kal in the eye. ‘The game is up for me, Kal. You win—it seems that you’re the true hero of Amaranthium after all, not me! Maybe I was wrong to try and take you down, but I won’t ask for your forgiveness. I had dreams of fame; I wanted a statue in the Forum; I wanted to rule the city through force of will alone. So I failed, but what a day! What better way to die than fighting to save the city from monsters!’
Kal didn’t know how to respond. She didn’t have to say anything, though, because Cassava died quickly in her arms, a joyous smile on her face.
* * *
Kal picked up a torch and followed the ghost the rest of the way to the secret door. She only had to follow the splashes of blood. Eventually, she recognised the long winding passage that she and Ben had got lost down on their journey under the city six years ago. She put out her torch again when she detected light ahead. The stone door was up ahead, and torches flickered in sconces on either side of it. The ghost paced back and forth before the door, occasionally stopping to peer back up the tunnel. It was clutching its injured right shoulder with its left hand.
Kal watched patiently. Eventually the ghost decided it couldn't wait any longer, and marched in her direction to resume its search of the maze. Kal hid herself in a dark crevice until it had passed by. When she was sure it had gone, she ran up to the door.
She found herself facing an impossible barrier: a solid wall of stone inscribed with the intimidating flaming fist. The only clue that there was indeed a way through was the small square hole in the direct centre of the block of stone. A keyhole …